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A new study has shown that the Koch Brothers' Americans for Prosperity's negative ads against Obamacare actually helped the President's signature legislation gain traction. The ads inadvertently put the word out – people didn't process the negativity, only that coverage was now available.

The oversized glossy mailers and robo-calls came in waves over the course of weeks to residents of a small Colorado city, asking them to protect their children, property and low tax rates by voting against a proposed city moratorium on the oil-and-gas extraction method known as fracking. The group behind the campaign calls itself “Protect Colorado,” short for “Protecting Colorado’s Environment, Economy and Energy Independence,” but failed to file the proper paperwork. Shocking that such a group could look to cut corners.

Greenhouse gases and their impact on the environment must be included in the costs of expanding a Colorado coal mine, a judge ruled in late June. The decision has far-reaching impacts on future mines in that and other areas, setting an incredible precedent.

With so many states inexorably marching towards a wild west-style gun funland, it's nice to see some reasonable curbs on gun ownership upheld by the court. In a ruling Thursday, a Colorado judge said that both background checks and limits on bullets in magazines are not unreasonable burdens.

At 9:35 p.m. on Saturday, May 30, Greeley, Colorado was struck by a 3.4 magnitude earthquake. Earthquakes are highly unusual in eastern Colorado, raising speculation that it was a “frackquake” — a man-made earthquake stimulated by the disposal of contaminated drilling water in deep injection wells. This disposal technique forces wastewater generated from fracking deep into underground rock formations, lubricating layers of rock that would not ordinarily be subject to movement.

A storage tank attached to an oil well damaged by recent flooding spilled 7,500 gallons of crude oil into the Cache la Poudre River near Windsor in Northern Colorado, reported the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (COGCC).

Cory Gardner, the Colorado Rep who has a history of promoting bad women's health policy, is trying to hide his position on a personhood bill basically banning abortion. Planned Parenthood, in a new ad, isn't having any of it.

Hours after the bombshell defeat last Tuesday of U.S. House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, politics observers across the country pronounced immigration policy reform dead — or more dead than ever. Now, even sympathetic Republican members of Congress presumably would run from any stance that even hinted at the kind of compromise Cantor was reputed to have made on the issue and for which he was pilloried in the primary contest that ended his political career.

It's no secret that State Rep. Cory Gardner has a problem with the personhood issue. His campaign for U.S. Senate recognized the trouble almost immediately — the issue has been repeatedly crushed at the polls in Colorado — and made a somewhat surprise move in March to announce that Gardner has flipped (sort of) on his support for of the notion that a U.S. citizen with full legal rights is created BEFORE conception. Because that will make abortion disappear forever. Unfortunately for Gardner, trying to remove the personhood label has proved much more difficult.

Four in 10 new oil and gas wells near national forests and fragile watersheds or otherwise identified as higher pollution risks escape federal inspection, unchecked by an agency struggling to keep pace with America's drilling boom, according to an Associated Press review that shows wide state-by-state disparities in safety checks. Roughly half or more of wells on federal and Indian lands weren't checked in Colorado, Utah and Wyoming, despite potential harm that has led to efforts in some communities to ban new drilling.

Laura Woods, a conservative candidate vying for the GOP Senate spot in Colorado, has asked 'unaffiliated' voters to come to the primary booths and cast their ballots for her. You may recall Mississippi's primary last month, where Thad Cochran used the same tactic to narrowly beat his tea party rival.

Of the millions of dollars candidates, party committees and outside groups have spent on TV air time in Colorado, not one dime has been spent so far for ad time at Spanish-language stations. “I thought that both parties learned the lesson from 2012, where they saw how important the Latino vote was for those elections. Maybe it’s one of those instances, where they have Latino or Hispanic outreach as an afterthought. It’s part of the conversation but they haven’t taken action. … Or maybe we’re looking at a different sort of strategy, more direct and less media,” an analyst said.

GOP U.S. Senate candidate Cory Gardner has his talking points on energy down pat. It’s total BS, of course, but he’s got great delivery. Who cares if his jobs statistic suggests that a ban on fracking — which isn't even on the ballot — would kill 120,000 jobs overnight? Especially if that number relies on the belief that a ban would result in the closing of every gas station in Colorado?

Attorney General John Suthers, acknowledging the altered “reality of the legal landscape” brought to Colorado by recent federal court rulings, announced he is asking judges to suspend all litigation in gay marriage cases wending their way through the state and federal judicial systems here until higher courts decide with finality on the constitutionality of state gay marriage bans like the one voted into the Colorado constitution in 2006.

SCOTUSBlog, renowned for its reporting of the highest court in the land, will not be credentialed. A five member panel of old-media journalists denied the appeal of the blog, saying that its parent company wasn't a news organization (and overlooking the fact that most newspapers are now owned by non-media corporations).

On Monday at 11:27 a.m., a 2.6 magnitude earthquake rattled to the surface from 2.5 miles under the earth 5 miles north-east of Greeley. It’s roughly the same spot that generated a 3.4 magnitude quake on June 2nd and that fueled speculation that waste-fluid injection wells tied to the oil-and-gas drilling process known as fracking were bringing quakes to the region.

Greeley is in the heart of the northern Front Range gas patch, where the politics of fracking have heated up, pitting residents and environmental groups against the drilling industry and most political le

A TV ad-buying company with close ties to Republican Party leaders reserved a whopping 1,326 spots in the Denver market this fall, but the station receiving the $740,070 contract removed it from public view when a reporter tried to learn who was footing the bill. The deleted ad reservation at Denver’s KMGH Channel 7 came from Target Enterprises, a Los Angeles-based firm whose client list includes top Republican candidates and well-known conservative groups.

A Denver police captain was arrested on domestic violence charges. The department tried to cover it up, but the Blue Wall cracked. Internal Affairs is now involved and it looks like the scandal goes to the very highest levels.

Citizens of Lafayette, Colo., have filed a class action lawsuit against the State of Colorado, the Colorado Oil and Gas Association (COGA) and Governor John Hickenlooper requesting immediate enforcement of Lafayette's Community Rights Charter Amendment to ban fracking.

For years, Colorado U.S. Senator Mark Udall was a lonely critic on Capitol Hill of anti-terror surveillance laws he said were ripe for abuse. He teamed with Oregon Democratic Senator Ron Wyden to demand lawmakers redraft the Patriot Act to bolster civil-liberty protections. Those efforts got a boost in 2011 when Kentucky Republican Rand Paul joined them, and their small movement took off when NSA contractor Edward Snowden last year leaked vast digital evidence that the abuses the senators were warning against were a reality that had to be addressed.

With same-sex marriage bans being ruled unconstitutional across the nation in rapid succession, Republican Colorado Attorney General John Suthers' stubborn insistence on defending Amendment 43, the same-sex marriage ban in the Colorado constitution, is becoming much harder to defend politically. Of course, that only means he's doubling down on those efforts.

A new solar power plant being conceived in Colorado – with plans to go on line by 2016 – will generate enough power for 13,500 homes, or the equivalent of taking 483,000 cars off the road in the next 20 years.